the reading (from lew) is from the book, The Way of Tarot, by alejandro jodorowsky, psychotherapist, author, film director, and writer of what alan moore called the best comic book ever written.

1. this reading gets us back into story telling, a common thread these days, and (as the beginning of an analysis of tarot as a psychological tool — vs a divinatory one), raises the question of the usefulness of old images/tools for changing how we think. is the change we want one that gets in touch with old ways of being (in which case do old-reminiscent images help that?), or new ways? what do new and old even mean in this scenario?

2. one reviewer on amazon talks about this book being very illuminating, but marred by outdated and limiting understandings of gender (women are receptive, men are active, etc). this is hinted at in the final paragraph of our reading.

without defending jodorowsky (which there is no need to do) is it interesting to question the basis of modern feminism? (which argues that men and women are close enough to the same that that is the best/only acceptable generalization to make about the question.) whether or not receptivity/action are the relevant roles, what do we get from considering that there may be differences that are body-based? what do we lose from that?

3. in this intro jodorowsky posits other people who changed the tarot as bastardizing it, but his changes as making it better, and cites his dedication to the process as evidence of that. does it matter that on the face of it this is contradictory (ie who is he to determine the effort/relevance of other people’s work on the tarot)? how is he referring to an original truth, and what does that mean about how he thinks people are in the world?

ps:

Jodorowsky about his twitter account:

Yes, I will have 200,000 followers. Every day it’s growing. The twitters sometime I make in English. For me it is the new literature. The new poetry is there. It’s free, you do that because you love to do that. The characters are limited and you have immediately answer. Now when I make a sentence I know 200,000 people read it. You have immediately answer! Fantastic literary communication. Philosophical, also. A lot of persons speak idiocies, no? How they go to the bathroom. It’s silly. But if you use that technique with real soul, with a desire to communicate, it’s the most important invention of our century. That’s what I believe.

1. what does it mean that the most nihilist communications are coming from the environmental scene(s)? given that desert, dark mountain, and black seed are all pointing in the direction of (or outright insisting) there is nothing we can do, how does that change what we do (since we are also, always, doing something)?

2. what is the difference between Desert and Uncivilised? does it matter that one calls itself anarchist, and the other claims no political affiliation?